Michael Rips: 2 books

A son uncovers the remarkable secret life of his midwestern father—and his Nebraska city—in this “beguiling [and] deeply unusual” memoir (The Boston Sunday Globe).   Nick Rips’s son had always known him as a conservative midwesterner, dedicated, affable, bland to the point of invisibility....

Everywhere hailed for its quirkiness, its hilarity, its charm, "Pasquale's Nose" tells the story of a New York City lawyer who runs away to a small Etruscan village with his wife and new baby, and discovers a community of true eccentrics -- warring bean growers, vanishing philosophers, a blind bootmaker, a porcupine hunter -- among whom he feels unexpectedly at home.